Chapter Monthly Event
Government Printing Office
Washington, D.C.
Thurday, February 28, 2008
A dozen chapter members and guests attended a tour of the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, February 28, 2008. Our tour guides will be Chris Sweterlitsch & George Barnum.
The Government Printing Office (GPO) is an agency of the legislative branch of the United States federal government. The office prints and provides access to documents produced by and for all three branches of the federal government, including the Supreme Court, the Congress, the Executive Office of the President, executive departments, and independent agencies.
The primary mission of the GPO is to inform citizens by making government publications widely available, by gathering, cataloging, providing, and preserving published information in all forms. GPO provides information to the public through GPO Access, which contains searchable databases of government information, and through the Federal Depository Library Program, which is a partnership with hundreds of libraries throughout the country.
GPO began operations in accordance with Congressional Joint Resolution 25 of June 23, 1860. The activities of GPO are defined in the public printing and documents chapters of Title 44 of the United States Code. The Public Printer, who serves as the head of GPO, is appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate.
Visiting places like this help show the impact offset & digital printing along with the internet are rapidly changing the landscape of printing history. At one point the Government Printing Office had 8,500 people working in the printing and production area
Unfortunately, as the world gets more and more suspicious, we couldn't take cameras into the building this time around. Below we'll put up a few from a similar APHA chapter visit two years ago.
Government Printing Office annual reports.
George Barnum pulled a variety of wonderful samples from the GPO archives including books with a gazillion notes, corrections and additions as printing and writing styles changed over the years. There was also a wonderful display of photos highlighting the apprentice program over the years as hundreds and hundreds of new people entered the printing trade through the efforts of the GPO.
It is always nice to see working (or at least mostly working) equipment from the hot metal days. We got a demonstration of an Intertype typesetter which was a very nice treat along with producing a lot of smell memories of days gone by. Having equipment that works is hard enough. Having people that can keep it working is clearly becoming one of the serious problems as technology advances.
Part of their movable type collection. It is hard to imagine what this must have been like when they were composing type and printing exclusively with metal.
Another highlight was a visit to the bookbinding room where we got to see part of the production process with both 'cased in' books as well as 'lace bound' books.
I suspect one of the highlight for most of us was a demonstration of marbling. Many of the books utilized marbling on the book edges. It was nice to see this live and to imagine the importance of many of the books that had been bound in this very room.
An early photograph of the building we were in which was built in the 1940s.
Jill Cypher & Ray Nichols of Lead Graffiti printed a keepsake for everyone that attended.
A group of us went out for lunch at Kelly's afterwards.
Left to right: Mike Denker, Jill Cypher, Sara Stone, Bob Rabb, Stuart Bradley, Laetitia Yeandle, and Ray Nichols.
It was a great way to spend half a day.
